One hundred and twelve years ago today, on March 13, 1911, the Great Thetan, the Commodore, Source, LRH, the Great OT, yes L. Ron Hubbard himself, was born in Tilden, Nebraska.
Now, normally the organization he left behind, the Church of Scientology, would have its annual international event at Ruth Eckerd Hall in Clearwater, Florida, and a couple of thousand devotees would be treated to tall tales about Hubbard as “Mankind’s Best Friend,” featuring astounding stories of his exploits over his lifetime, which lasted until 1986.
But alas, since the pandemic hit, Scientology has pared back its yearly events and we don’t even know if they are putting on the same sorts of elaborate shindigs, which featured Hubbard’s official biographer, the late Dan Sherman, mixing research with pure fantasy to puff up Ron’s resume.
However, if Scientology is hurting these days, we are prepared to leap into the breach. We are bringing you a tall tale told by Hubbard himself which was featured by Dan at the 2012 LRH Birthday event.
It’s a whopper, and features Hubbard claiming that he and his pal Johny Arwine kept America’s nuclear physicists from banding together to use A-bombs to overthrow the US government late in 1945. Oh, that Ron. This is great stuff. Here’s the transcript.
Right at the end of World War II, a chap by the name of Johny Arwine, lieutenant commander of the Coast Guard and myself went to the California Institute of Technology, Caltech, to meet with a great many old-time atomic physicists who had been at the projects that dropped the original bomb, the people from Los Alamogordos. And it was our intention to organize these people so that some sort of sensible control could be monitored across the bomb. We were still in uniform when we went down to Caltech and we got these atomic physicists together. We said, "We're going to have a meeting." And they remembered us and they were very happy to talk to us. And the next thing you know, we did. We had a very vast number of atomic physicists there and I took the chair and Arwine addressed them. And we spoke of using a propaganda weapon against anyone who would use atomic fission further against the human race, of using any means we had to educate the people in the world concerning this. And the nuclear physicist was already so mad, he was already so furious, that Arwine and I could not control that meeting, even vaguely. We could keep them in their place. We could tell the next fellow to talk. But we — we couldn't get across any thought to them that was rationally workable. And these men said only one thing — "We wish to overthrow the government of the United States by force." Now that is an astonishing little chapter in the field of nuclear physics that only a few of us know about. There was a revolt. And later on you saw offices in the United States being opened to propagandize the public and a movement led by Albert Einstein. And that was the outgrowth of that meeting. But all Arwine and I could manage to do at that meeting was say, "Guys, please! You people are talking in terms of mutiny, revolution." And the only answer we'd get to it was, "We'll develop a bomb so that every atomic physicist can have one and nobody can arrest him and we'll put this government in its place." These fellows were mad. We withdrew our support and did what we could to knock the rough edge off the movement. We said we could not associate our names with this organization. And it all fell to nothing. But the atomic physicist did try. That was his push. It took place late in the year of 1945 in the United States. The punishment taken against him was severe.
Three years after that slick video was produced by Scientology for the 2012 event, with the help of Lawrence Wright’s researcher Lauren Wolf we pieced together the actual history of the “physicists’ revolt” that Hubbard mangled. Of course, Hubbard had created pure fantasy from some things that had actually happened (but which didn’t actually involve him.)
Hey, but that’s Ron. And we’re thinking of him on this day, wherever he is.
We’d love to hear from you: What’s your favorite of Ron’s many whoppers?
Thank you for reading today’s story here at Substack. For the full picture of what’s happening today in the world of Scientology, please join the conversation at tonyortega.org, where we’ve been reporting daily on David Miscavige’s cabal since 2012. There you’ll find additional stories, and our popular regular daily features:
Source Code: Actual things founder L. Ron Hubbard said on this date in history
Avast, Ye Mateys: Snapshots from Scientology’s years at sea
Overheard in the Freezone: Indie Hubbardism, one thought at a time
Past is Prologue: From this week in history at alt.religion.scientology
Random Howdy: Your daily dose of the Captain
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Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s 112th birthday: What’s your favorite tall tale of his?